RIO JOURNAL

RIO JOURNAL; A Spirited 'Holy War' In an Easygoing Land

By ALAN RIDING, Special to the New York Times

Published: December 31, 1988

RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec. 30—
More than 180,000 members of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God jammed a huge soccer stadium here one recent Sunday to hear Bishop Edir Macedo denounce the Devil and his supposed presence among powerful African-Brazilian spiritist cults.

But the crowd was disappointed. Fearing new incidents in a simmering ''holy war'' between the pentecostal Universal Church and spiritist cults, the state governor, Wellington Moreira Franco, authorized the ceremony only on condition that Bishop Macedo pledge not to attack other religious groups.

''I have to remain quiet today,'' the preacher told his followers before asking them to contribute generously to his church, ''because I have promised the Governor that I will not say certain things. Later on in our temples, we can talk about them at will.''

In reality, his message is already well known here. Since founding his fundamentalist movement in 1977, the 43-year-old Bishop has focused his attention on the millions of people who are active in the umbanda and candomble cults, accusing them of Devil-worship and offering to exorcize them of evil spirits. More Than 500,000 Members

In barely a decade, using pamphlets, radio, television, mass meetings and door-to-door campaigning, the Universal Church has expanded from a modest room above a funeral parlor in Rio de Janeiro to comprise close to 600 temples and more than 500,000 members across Brazil. It has even opened four temples in the United States.

But now, reacting to the threat posed by its rapid expansion, leaders of the spiritist cults are fighting back, accusing Bishop Macedo not only of embezzlement and charlatanism but also of violating the constitutional guarantee of religious freedom by encouraging his followers to attack umbanda and candomble centers.

Last month, at the request of the National Council of Umbanda and African-Brazilian Cults, state police began an investigation into charges that the Universal Church ''pretends to cure people by expelling the Devil from their bodies, using grotesque and humiliating gestures reminiscent of the barbaric sects of the Middle Ages.''

A State Assemblyman, Atila Nunes, who was elected with the backing of umbanda groups and is now a strong critic of the Universal Church, said Bishop Macedo's ''marketing strategy'' was to exploit the poor and ignorant. ''If a man loses his job or a woman fights with her husband, if anything goes wrong, it's all the fault of the Devil,'' he said. A Switch to Protestantism

The Universal Church is in fact only one of several dozen fundamentalist Protestant sects to have grown dramatically here over the last 15 years, with an estimated 20 million of Brazil's 145 million inhabitants now said to have converted from Catholicism to some form of Protestantism.

While many of these converts were once active in African-Brazilian spiritist cults, however, many religious experts believe both phenomena are rooted in the broader failure of the Catholic Church to respond in recent years to the basic spiritual needs of peasant migrants and slum dwellers.

Although Brazil is still predominantly Catholic, its 374 Catholic bishops and 13,200 priests are insufficient to maintain a permanent presence among the poor majority. Further, as the church has become more involved in social and political affairs, it has turned its back on more traditional forms of popular religiosity.

Many experts believe that the fundamentalist sects and the spiritist cults are therefore competing for the same socially deprived and poorly educated sector of the urban population that seeks solace in a world of spirits, miraculous cures and exorcisms where good and evil are clearly defined.

The approaches of the two groups, though, are very different. For example, while many participants in spiritist cults also claim to be Catholics and see little need to proselytize, converts to fundamentalist sects often view ''nonbelievers'' as heathens and consider it their duty to offer them salvation. 'Many Are the Paths'

''For us, many are the paths that take us to the Creator,'' explained Geronimo Vanzelotti, a spokesman for the National Council of Umbanda. ''The problem with the Universal Church is that it claims to be the only truth. And it has gone from attacking our ideas to attacking our centers.''

Bishop Macedo denies those charges. ''They're upset because they're losing people,'' he said in an interview in the offices of a radio station run by his church here. ''We're only aggressive against evil spirits. The truth is that our temples have been attacked by fanatics who feel threatened by the work of God.''

The young preacher said he knew his enemies because he was born a Catholic and himself joined a spiritist cult at the age of 17 ''when I saw that Catholicism doesn't resolve anything in people's lives.'' Then, three years later, he joined a fundamentalist sect, the Church of New Life, until he founded the Universal Church in 1977.

''Exorcism is the basic work that we do,'' he explained. ''It's what Jesus did. Many of our followers are people who were first disappointed in Catholicism and then in umbanda. I know the symptoms of people possessed by malignant spirits. We have grown because we go to people's problems, we show them results in their lives.'' Moved to U.S. 2 Years Ago

Two years ago, Bishop Macedo moved to the United States. He lives in Westchester County, N.Y. - he declined to name the town, citing security concerns - and has temples in Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx and Newark. ''God told us to go to the center of all nations in the world, as Rome was in the time of Jesus,'' he said. ''We want to create a center of evangelism there and then send converts back to their own countries.''

But the battlefront for the Universal Church remains Brazil, and Bishop Macedo returns here four times a year to preach, apparently convinced that the growing controversy stirred by the Universal Church is proof of its steady advance. ''We're hurting the Catholic Church, umbanda, politicians, everyone who lives off lies and dirt,'' he claimed.

His enemies, though, now also include the local press, which is openly sympathetic to the spiritist cults in their battle with the Universal Church. ''Let's see what happens to the police investigation because criminal charges are involved,'' Assemblyman Nunes said. ''But if nothing happens here, we're going to send our evidence to the F.B.I. so it can investigate Macedo in the United States.''

Photos of some of the more than 180,000 members of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God who filled a soccer stadium in Rio de Janeiro recently (NYT/Sonia de Almeida); Bishop Edir Macedo, leader of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, a fundamentalist Protestant sect that opposes the powerful African-Brazilia spiritist cults (NYT/Alan Riding)